


Absence of Knowing

by dapperanachronism



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Conspiracy, Everyone has to come to terms with something, Grieving, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Slash, Resolution of outstanding issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28173906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dapperanachronism/pseuds/dapperanachronism
Summary: "It doesn't add up. He never should have left a trace."In the aftermath of Siberia, there are questions left unanswered. Questions like why the video that ripped them all apart even exists in the first place.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark
Comments: 14
Kudos: 107
Collections: Marvel Trumps Hate 2018





	Absence of Knowing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [delphia2000](https://archiveofourown.org/users/delphia2000/gifts).



> This is a (very late) fill for the 2018 Marvel Trumps Hate auction. I had the joy of being won by delphia2000 who presented me with questions and ideas that I loved, and allowed me to branch out and explore some really cool 'What Ifs?" Thank you delphia for your patience. 
> 
> Thank you [Robin_tCJ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Robin_tCJ/pseuds/Robin_tCJ) for the beta, the cheering, the brainstorming, and the general awesomeness.

There are days he wishes that he hadn’t let Steve talk him out of cryo, and today is one of them. He sits tucked away in a corner of a small garden in T’Challa’s palace grounds, with Steve minding his own business on the other side - far enough away to give him space, but close enough that he’s not alone. And then Natasha appears and settles herself down next to Steve on a stone bench. At this rate, Bucky figures Sam might as well appear, too, and they’ll have a regular old party then. He snorts at the thought. None of them are exactly in a party mood.

“Something about it just doesn’t sit right with me,” Natasha says quietly. She might be talking to Steve, but the fact that she’s even having this conversation out here with him so close means she wants him to hear it, too. Clever. But that’s her.

“What do you mean?” Steve’s voice is tired, heavy, weighed down with everything that had happened in the last few weeks. It feels like a year since Bucky had looked up and seen the news clip in the market, since his carefully crafted world came crashing down. He’d liked Bucherest, the anonymity that he’d had. It was… almost peaceful. Of course it was never going to last, ‘peaceful’ wasn’t something that he got to keep. Not ever. Someone was always going to come looking for him, something was always going to end up in a fight. But he’d hoped to maybe have a little more time. His fingers curl tightly around the battered notebook half tucked under his leg where he’s sitting. He never bothered to ask Natasha how she got them back, she had just appeared one day shortly after they’d arrived in Wakanda and wordlessly handed over his previously confiscated backpack with a look that said she understood they’re all he’d had.

“I mean, it doesn’t add up. The Winter Soldier is a ghost story, practically a myth. I told you, most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he existed, partly because he never left a trace.”

Except for the occasional scar, he thinks pointedly of the mark above her hip that he’d put there. Yeah, he remembered her even before she’d reminded him.

“Why make the hit in front of a camera?” She continues. “He would have known it was there. And even if he didn’t notice the camera until after the fact, and then shot it out, why would HYDRA keep the evidence? A hit meant to look like an accident, carried out by a man who leaves no trace, and they keep proof of it? It’s sloppy. HYDRA doesn’t do sloppy. Not like that. Not with him.”

“What are you saying?” Steve cuts in. “That it wasn’t him? He didn’t do it?”

Oh Steve. Poor, righteous Steve. Of course he did it. He remembers the light going out from Howard’s eyes. It’s a blessing Maria died on impact. Her death haunts him, but at least he doesn’t see in his head the moment her life was snuffed out.

“No, I’m pretty sure he did it,” Natasha responds, almost chastising. Steve isn’t naive, never has been, certainly isn’t now. Righteous, stubborn. But not naive. Of course Bucky did it. “I’m just saying… there’s more going on here.”

Bucky tunes out after that. He was as shocked as any of them, seeing that footage. Natasha was right, it was sloppy. He remembers shooting out the camera. He would have reported that when he returned to his handler. He was never supposed to leave evidence. But he did. And he remembers. There must have been some reason to keep it, that wasn’t ever his business. He did his part. And he’s dug a chasm between Steve and his friend. Sitting here under the hospitality of a gracious king, he still thinks he’s not worth the effort.

He only starts to tune in again when Natasha stands and goes to leave. “Give me at least a few days. Maybe it’s nothing, but-”

“But you can’t not pull on that thread,” Steve finishes. She smiles at him in a way that speaks to some history between them, and Steve glances over at him. Oh. It’s about him. It’s always about him.

He sighs to himself and drops his head back against the wall as she says her goodbye, the warm night air settling around him.

* * *

Staying in Wakanda has also meant letting Shuri poke at him. Sure, his knee jerk reaction to having anyone poke around in his head is blind panic, but Shuri isn’t HYDRA, and

she’d offered him the possibility of getting the lingering conditioning out of his head, the chance to pull out the words for good and make it so that no one could use them against him ever again. And that… that was a temptation sweet enough to make him agree. Besides, he liked the kid - she was smart, funny, didn’t treat him like he was made of glass or a bomb about to explode. That she was nothing like any of the handlers or scientists that had worked with him before definitely helped him feel a little more at ease.

So that’s how he finds himself slowly coming back into his own awareness down in her work space. The last thing he remembers before the haze of control set in, before his autonomy and identity was stripped away was hearing Steve say those words, looking for all the world like every single one was a hot knife sinking into him. It had been Shuri’s suggestion — request, really — that they do this. She had an up to date scan of his brain, but scanning him when the conditioning was triggered would go a long way towards helping her understand exactly how it was rooted into his brain. Steve had flat out refused at first, his face paling at the idea, that righteous anger that Bucky knew so well welling up inside him. But it wasn’t Steve’s choice.

“Steve, if it'll help her figure out how to get this out of me,” he’d said, shrugging his hunched shoulders.

“There has to be some other way.”

“I could figure it out,” Shuri agreed. “But being able to see exactly how the synapses are firing, how his brain responds, it’s going to take a lot of the guesswork out of what we’re doing. I’ll find an answer a lot quicker.”

“But-” Steve started to protest, but Bucky cut him off.

“If you’re the one saying it, I’ll be okay. I trust you Steve.” _You won’t make me do something terrible._

It had been the sort-of truth. He had been relatively okay — relative being compared to the last time those words had been used against him. Which, granted, was not a high fucking bar. But even handing complete control of himself over to the one person who would never betray him, he still felt the panic rise with every word, bile creeping into his throat until the calm blankness had overtaken everything.

When he comes to his senses, he finds that he’s laying back quite comfortably in a chair, Steve watching him with concern. Given the last time this had happened he’d woken up in a cold warehouse handcuffed to a pipe with Steve staring hard at him, this is a significant improvement.

“Hey, you back with us?” Steve asks, his forehead pinched in concern. It mimics the same twist Bucky feels in his stomach for making Steve do what he’d done. He doesn’t trust himself to speak, so he simply nods, and lets himself drop his head against Steve’s shoulder, taking a moment to center himself.

“Well boys, that was a resounding success!” Shuri calls over, her energy palpable across the work space. It’s enough to draw Bucky to his surprisingly steady feet and pull him over to see her displays. “Look.” She does something, and the three dimensional image of his brain appears. For a moment, nothing changes, and he wonders briefly what he’s supposed to be looking at. And then he sees it, the way one area lights up, pings another, and in less than a blink of an eye everything shifts.

“What?” He asks, staring at the image.

Shuri grins, and rewinds the image back to the moment everything lights up. “That right there, that’s the moment Steve finished saying the last word,” she explains. “There was activity before that, obviously. A little bit of your understandable panic, a little bit of your brain priming itself because it knows what that sequence of words means. But this, right here, right there,” - she points - “is where the switch flipped.”

“And… that helps?” Steve asks, a little incredulous.

“Oh that definitely helps,” Shuri agrees, and dives into her work gleefully. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”

It could take her hours, days, weeks to figure out anything truly useful. Well, probably not weeks, he revises internally as he watches her work. She’s too smart for that. But it’s not going to be instantaneous. He glances over at Steve. They could both use some air, and by wordless agreement they make their way out of the work space, out of the palace, onto the grounds. Still, he feels the tug, the want to go back inside and wait, but hovering isn’t going to make Shuri work any faster, and is in fact more likely to end with her telling him off.

Steve, bless him, helps to keep him distracted, telling him stories about what it was like the first few weeks after he’d woken up from the ice, telling him stories about the stupid shit he’d gotten up to in the time since, so he manages to resist going back in until the following afternoon. Shuri has endless projects on the go, endless ideas to pursue, endless improvements to make. But she’d put them all on hold at T’Challa’s request. For him. He’s never going to be able to thank them enough. She grins and waves as he makes his way into the space. He smiles back, weakly, and tucks himself up in a chair to read quietly and out of the way. It just makes sense, he tells himself. If she has questions, he’s close by and can answer immediately. He’s helping in his own way, or so he tells himself.

Shuri’s expression is animated and unguarded as she works, and he learns quickly that she enjoys talking to herself and her machines. He expects the puzzlement, the cheers that erupt when she wrestles something into working her way. But he doesn’t anticipate the furrow of confusion that appears a while later, or the way it deepens on her face, morphing into concern. She’s studying something with an intensity that could bore into the center of the earth, her hands flying over the display. Then she freezes, the corners of her mouth turned down and she’s glaring at the display.

Bucky’s stomach sinks as he hears her say, “Something’s not right.”

* * *

"Sir, you have a visitor," FRIDAY's voice cuts through the noise as he's tinkering with Rhodey's armour down in the compound’s workshop. He looks up, and even though FRIDAY had _just_ alerted him, Natasha is already in the workshop and leaning casually against the glass wall, arms folded across her chest. She pushes away from the wall and moves toward his workbench, leaning over it with a calculatingly wry smile quirking one corner of her mouth.

"Back from your mysterious adventure?" He asks, setting down the soldering iron and spinning around to face her. "Assume you were off practising your super secret spy skills, what with the 'things to investigate,' and 'I'm following a hunch,' and the radio silence. How was Wakanda?"

She raises an eyebrow as Tony presses on, waving his hand. "Go where you want, I don't care. Doesn't bother me." The cell phone that had appeared in the post one day is sitting in the bottom of a drawer in the shop, and Tony is very pointedly ignoring its existence. If Natasha wants to go off and hang out with Steve and Bucky, that’s up to her. She’s a grown up, he’s not going to tell her how to live her life and who to be friends with. Not that he could even if he'd wanted to.

"I found what I was looking for," she says at last, setting a USB drive down on the table next to him.

"Uh huh,' Tony responds, arms folded over his chest as he eyes the drive like it might bite him given half the chance. "And what were you looking for?"

"Answers."

Well, that’s suitably cryptic. "Come on, Nat, the suspense is killing me."

She pulls up another tall stool, and takes a seat next to him. "I did go to Wakanda," she admits, shrugging. "Then I followed a few leads, did some digging of my own using a few less than savoury, but incredibly useful connections. And then I went to The Raft."

"The Raft?" Tony frowns. "Why there? Rogers already broke everyone out." He pointedly ignores the way that Natasha is eying him knowingly, but says nothing about any hypothetical remote assistance Steve might have received getting their friends out of the Raft. She doesn't comment on the way that security was mysteriously lacking, or cameras conveniently malfunctioning leaving no record of how Clint and Sam and the others might have gone from being in cells one moment, to very clearly not being in cells the next.

"Not everyone. Zemo is still there," she corrects, nodding to the drive sitting on the table between them. Tony's stomach sinks

"And why would you want to see him?" he asks, trying and failing to appear unconcerned.

"Don't tell me that you don't have questions," she says.

"No," Tony says shortly. "Pretty sure I ended up with all the information that I ever wanted. More, in fact. No questions. No desire to revisit that particular chapter. Think we need to just all move on with our lives and call it good."

"Well, it's not good," she responds, pressing the issue. Tony grits his teeth and turns away to avoid snapping at her. She kind of deserves it, intentionally poking at a wound that's still very sore, and, honestly, not exactly healing.

She says nothing else, but plugs the drive into the workstation, and pulls up the file list like it's second nature. Out of the corner of his eye, Tony watches her work, intuitive on a system that most people flounder with. A moment later, a video appears, a recording of Natasha sitting at a metal table, while across from her Zemo sits, looking exactly as he had that day in Siberia save for the prison jumpsuit and the handcuffs that attach his wrists to the table.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, Agent Romanoff?" His voice is as calm and even as ever, but it still makes something in Tony's chest tighten, pulling him back to that day. .

"Natasha-" he starts, but she cuts him off.

"Just watch. Please."

She looks at him, imploring,. How can he say no to that?

So he watches.

He watches as Natsaha talks, a master manipulator, expertly and subtly manoeuvering the conversation while still making Zemo feel like he's in control of everything he's telling her. Tony watches as she shifts the conversation back to the bombing of the UN. To framing Bucky as a way to draw him out. Recounting the events that lead them all to that base in Siberia.

"Not exactly a documented base, even in HYDRA's records," video-Natasha comments.

Video-Zemo looks almost proud as he responds, "I had a friend who helped."

A friend? He hadn't been working alone. Tony is paying a little more attention now, new pieces of the puzzle he wanted to forget coming to light. He doesn't realise how caught up he is in what's unfolding before his eyes until Natasha asks about that fucking video.

"A work of art," Zemo practically purrs.

Wait, what?

Everything blurs together after that, and he’ll have to go over it in his head a few more times before it even makes sense. Rumlow, freelancing after HYDRA's fall. Rumlow, who had spent weeks -- months -- working with the Asset. Watching the technicians work. Rumlow, who not only knew the words, but knew where to find the book. The key to unlocking the soldier and bending him to Zemo's will. Rumlow, who for a very significant pay day, hunted Barnes down. Used the words. Brought them all to Siberia, to the remains of the failed expansion of the Winter Soldier program. Turns out, HYDRA’s neural reprogramming chair could be manipulated to do more than just _wipe_ memories.

"And the video?" Natasha prompts again.

"An easy thing to make. Really, it is remarkable the kinds of things anyone can produce with enough patience and the right resources. Truly, the creative possibilities are endless."

"Bullshit," Tony cuts in, and the video freezes. "I call bullshit."

"Tony," Natasha starts, but he rolls right on.

"No. Don't you Tony me. Seriously. You want me to believe it was all fake? That Zemo faked the fucking video of Barnes murdering my parents?" He pushes himself up off his chair and starts pacing the shop. "No, that's insane. You realise that, right? It's insane. He's fucking with you. Why go to all the trouble? I asked Barnes if he remembered them and he did."

"False memories," Natasha says evenly.

"False memories. Of course. Right. Brock Rumlow managed to get the drop on the Winter Fucking Soldier and spirit him off to a mad science lab for nefarious evil purposes."

"Brock Rumlow was a highly-skilled STRIKE team leader," Natasha points out, a razor sharp edge to her voice. Subtle, but present. "You forget, I worked with him for years. He wasn't just good, he was the best. And he was working directly with Pierce when Pierce had Barnes in DC. If anyone could have done it, it was him."

Right. Years side-by-side, where Natasha of all people -- a world-class spy whose ability to deceive had kept her alive -- was caught blindsided by his betrayal. So maybe he was good.

But to accept all of this...

"So what, I'm supposed to just not believe his video, but I am supposed to believe this?" he gestures to the frozen frame of the two sitting in the interrogation room. A flicker of genuine hurt crosses Natasha's face, an emotion she would only let him see intentionally.

"I'm your friend, Tony. I wouldn’t be sharing this if I weren’t absolutely sure."

He drops back down in his seat as she gets out of hers, crossing over to him. She pauses, sets a hand on his shoulder, and squeezes gently. "I can’t stay, but I’ll be in touch.” She doesn’t have to tell him where she’s going, he knows. She showed this to him first, even before Barnes, or Steve.

He's still sitting, staring, long after her footsteps have disappeared.

* * *

Several hours and several glasses of whisky later, Tony is deep into the rest of the files that Natasha has on the drive. She hadn't just gifted him with the footage of her interrogation, she had gifted him with what looked like every bit of information on the Winter Soldier's file she could find. While he had delved into the HYDRA files after she'd released them in the data dump, he'd never looked into the Winter Soldier specifically. Never really had a cause to.

He's glad he isn't entirely sober now that he _is_ looking at them, because what he sees is.... bad. Horrifically bad. His stomach churns, and he pours himself another drink.

It takes a while to piece together across all the different records and files, but eventually with FRIDAY’s help, he cobbles together a timeline of the Winter Soldier's history, from the time that Zola took him after the fall, right up to Pierce. Every hand off. Every contract. Every hit.

Howard and Maria Stark aren't on that list.

They were assassinated. It just wasn't Bucky who did it.

"Fuck!" He yells, throwing his empty glass across the shop. It shatters. He couldn't care less. He takes another drink from the bottle and drops his head to the work top. He doesn’t know what to think right now. He doesn’t want to think at all, but his brain is running itself in frantic circles and Just. Won’t. Stop.

_Did you know?_

_I didn’t know it was him._

_Bullshit._

_Do you even remember them?_

_I remember all of them._

In the back of a drawer in the shop is a low tech flip phone. He'd thrown it in there and tried to forget about it, but in the weeks since, it's been burning a hole in the back of his mind. He's not really sure how it ends up in his hand now, or how it ends up pressed to his ear. He only knows that it's ringing, ringing, ringing, and then a surprised voice on the other end says, "Tony?"

"Put him on," Tony demands without preamble. He can't bear to hear Steve's voice, not right now, not with everything going on in his head. He needs to talk to-

"Who?" Steve asks.

-Bucky.

"Barnes. Come on, don't play dumb, Rogers. Put him on."

There's a silence on the other end of the phone, a rustling in the background. Maybe voices, he's not sure. He grits his teeth impatiently.

"It's the middle of the night there," Steve finally says. "Why are you calling now?"

"You're the one that gave me this fucking thing. Programmed with a single number. Seriously Steve, a flip phone? What is this, 2001? How did you even find it? You're the one who sent it and now you're asking me why I'm calling?" His words run together a little less clearly than he'd like, but fuck it, he just does not care right now. Doesn't care what Steve thinks of him. He needs Barnes.

"Why Bucky?" Steve asks. Tony wishes he could reach through the phone and strangle him. He's close to just fucking begging at this point when he hears a voice coaxing Steve to hand it over. "I'm putting it on speaker," Steve says.

"Stark," Barnes' voice carries over the now-unmistakably-on-speaker phone. He sounds tired. Tony can relate.

"Barnes," he responds, and stops. Now that he has Bucky on the line, he's not actually sure what he wants to say. Not like he planned out this conversation in his whisky-fueled haze.

"You said you remembered all of them," he says at last.

There is a pause on the other end of the line, before Bucky confirms, "Yeah. Some- some are more clear than others. But yeah. I remember all of them."

"My parents?"

It's not a surprise when he hears the quiet, pained, "Yeah."

Tony looks back at the screen where he has the timeline pieced out. He'd checked, and re-checked, and checked again. A knot of anger masking grief twists itself in his stomach. Fucking HYDRA. Still managing to fuck up people's lives after they'd 'fallen.' Fucked up his family. Fucked up his team. Fucked up him.

"Nat talk to you yet?" he asks.

"No?" Bucky responds, and Tony can practically hear the head tilt and the furrowed brow over the phone. Nat's not back. She came to him first. Bucky doesn't know. Well, shit.

"Tell T'Challa I'm dropping in to say hi," he says, and hangs up.

He needs to sober up. He needs to head out. He's a mechanic. He fixes shit. That's what he does. He's going to figure out how to fix this shit, too.

* * *

He's not actually sure what Steve told T'Challa, if anything at all. So, he's not really sure what kind of welcome awaits him, but the jet hadn’t been shot down coming into the city, so he's going to count that as a win. And, he's not exactly surprised that the king himself is on the ground, waiting to greet them. What _does_ surprise him is the fact that Steve is standing there next to him. It's almost enough to make him turn around and walk his ass right back onto the jet and fly home. He's not seen Steve since -- well -- doesn't matter now. That was all a lie, too. Sort of. Fuck. What was it Steve said Natasha had said to him? The truth is a matter of circumstance. Well this was one hell of a fucked up circumstance.

He's saved from trying to figure out what to say to Steve right away by T'Challa stepping forward. "Mr. Stark," he greets, as polite and strong as ever.

"Tony. Your Highness," he responds easily and shakes his hand.

"I think we can dispense with formalities, don't you?"

Tony couldn't agree more. He's wound tighter than a spring ready to snap, and honestly, that brief exchange is about all the capacity for formality that he has, and even then he manages mostly because even he isn't enough of an asshole to show up in someone else's until-very-recently-secret kingdom and start making demands. It would have been a good way to find himself very disliked, and unwelcome. He knows all too well what T'Challa and Okoye are capable of with people that are disliked and unwelcome.

"Did Natasha make it back?" he asks. _Do you know what she found?_ he doesn't ask.

"Yes," and the weight in his voice says he knows. "It seems the treachery of our mutual acquaintance runs deeper than we suspected."

That's putting it fucking mildly.

"Tony-" Steve's voice cuts in, and pauses. Tony doesn't look at him right away, and when at least he does turn, Steve's face is full of... well, a lot. Grief, pain, remorse, hope. "You didn't have to come. It's not-"

Tony stares at him for a long, hard moment before responding, "Yeah. It kind of is my issue too." with a shrug.

Steve doesn't say more to that, and before things can get even more incredibly awkward, T'Challa motions them to follow him. Tony does, but as he passes Steve, he leans in just enough to bump their shoulders together. It's easier than words, and Steve's ramrod straight spine softens fractionally. It's a start, for both of them.

T'Challa leads them through the palace and into heaven. That's the only way that Tony can describe what he's seeing. His own workspace is the leading edge of innovation and technology, but what he sees here threatens to leave him in the dust. In the middle of the space a young woman who he assumes is Princess Shuri is talking animatedly with Natasha, and beside them Bucky is sitting up on a bed, hunched over himself and looking like someone kicked his puppy. As they approach, Bucky looks up, registers his appearance, and visibly draws in on himself. Natasha, surprising him, greets him with a hug.

"Glad you made it," she says. If she is surprised to see him so soon, it doesn’t show.

Tony just shrugs. "Yeah well. A friend of mine left me with a couple things to mull over, and I thought, well, maybe I should listen to her. For once."

She gives him a rare, gentle smile. "First time for everything."

"Oh good, now that you're all here," the princess says, breaking through the moment and calling up a number of files on her own advanced displays. Tony is immediately over there, pouring over both her systems and the data.

"I have so many questions, about what you're working on," he says, immediately jumping in, eager to start exploring the capabilities of what she’s working with, forgetting for a moment why he’s here in the first place.

"Oh good, because I have some for you, too. I'll trade you."

Tony glances over, and immediately recognises the expression on Shuri's face -- brilliant, inquisitive, creative, a drive to take everything apart, see how it works and makes it better. He adores her instantly. "Done," he says without hesitation. It's not often he meets someone at this level and he's sure as hell going to exchange whatever he can with her.

"First, we have something a little more pressing," Natasha reminds them.

"Right! So," Shuri expands several scans that she's taken of Barnes' brain and the activity. "Every time that HYDRA, or whoever wiped him, it left a scar of sorts. You can see here," she points to a section on the scan that's a little darker, and which Tony recognises as an abnormality. "But on account of the enhanced healing, his brain would eventually start healing the damage like it would any other injury. That's why they always needed to wipe him every time. Like normal scars, they fade over time, some better, some worse. But what is strange is here-" she points to an area and expands it. "This is much, much newer. The last time HYDRA had him wiped was in DC, before the helicarrier. Well, using these scans I was able to create a model, which estimates that this 'scar,' for lack of a better word, is newer than that."

"Meaning someone wiped him after Insight," Tony concludes.

"Meaning someone did _something_ after Insight," Shuri corrects.

"How do you mean?" Tony looks from the model over to Bucky who still looks miserable, and like he hasn't slept in days.

"I don't have any gaps in my memory," Bucky says, speaking for the first time. Hearing his voice is strange. It's oddly quiet, and resigned, a little rough from disuse almost. "If they'd done a full wipe, I should have a gap in my memory. Should have forgotten everything and slowly started to remember again. I didn't."

"False memories," Tony says, and commandeers one of the displays and pulls up a transcript of the conversation between Zemo and Nat. He can't stand the idea of listening to that asshole's voice again.

"Exactly," Shuri agrees. "None of us are exactly head of the line wanting to believe that maniac, but even before Natasha brought me these, I had noticed something different about this. I had the data from the Siberia project pulled so I had more to look at." She pulls up another scan, a different brain this time, one a little less marred. "Here. HYDRA was never able to fully erase a memory, what they did instead was sever the neuroconnections that allowed that memory to be accessed and retrieved."

"Deleting the file pathway," Tony says with a nod.

"Exactly, but not the file itself. That's how Bucky's brain was eventually able to recover, it rebuilt over the ghosts of those severed connections. See here, this is what it looks like when that cut has been made." She points to an area on the second scan, and Tony nods. "But, _this_ is Bucky's brain, and down _here,_ it's broken, but then someone has gone in and laid down something else. A painting over a painting. "

"Create a gap in the memory, and then fill it with something else," Tony says, sinking into a chair.

"Making him think he killed someone he didn't," Natasha said softly.

Shit fucking hell. He'd known it was true. Natasha wouldn't have come to him with that information unless she had been absolutely certain it was true. But seeing what Shuri had discovered with his own eyes, well shit. That was just one last nail in the coffin. Bucky hadn't killed his parents. Zemo had played him, and won. Driven a wedge between them, divided his team. His family. Driven them to almost kill one another.

"Tony, I-" Steve starts to say before Tony cuts him off.

"Don't," he says sharply. "Not now, Steve. Please." he looks over. Pleading. And Steve nods. He can't deal with this right now. Instead, he shifts his attention to Shuri. There is a problem, and they both feel the need to solve it. To fix it. "Alright, so, how do we make it all better?

She grins at him. "I have a few ideas about that."

* * *

Now that Shuri actually has an understanding of what's wrong with Bucky’s head -- something he never thought he'd say, ever -- it's pretty quick work for her and Stark to develop a way to fix things. Shuri says she can break the hold the words have on him, render the code phrase inert. Of course when she explains it, it's a lot more complicated than that, but all he cares about is no one controlling him again. Bucharest was supposed to be safe. Relatively safe. There was always a chance someone would come for him -- Steve, HYDRA, someone else. He'd been right about that. He'd just never expected to not see it coming. To have no memory of it. There is no gap in his time in Bucharest, which means they'd over-written the time they'd abducted him -- used his control words and forced him to walk right into their plan. He remembers Rumlow from the vault in DC. Steve told him the guy was dead, for real this time. Probably lucky for him, otherwise there'd be a lineup of people ready to finish the job. He thinks Steve and Stark would both be fighting for the place at the front of that line.

He shudders, and shies away from the thought. He doesn't want to think about them fighting. The memory of Steve's shield driving through the power source of Stark’s suit is still too vivid. It might not be his fault, but he still feels the weight of responsibility, like he's the thing that turned them against each other. Because he was, even if he wasn't the one pulling the strings.

The process of messing around in his head is far from quick, and definitely not painless. Unlike HYDRA's blanket wipe, Shuri and Stark go in with laser precision. It isn’t the blinding, all consuming pain of the chair, the kind that made him feel like his whole body was on fire, but it still feels like an almost unbearable pressure, coupled with static shocks on the inside of his skull, his perception sliding in and out of focus, only to be assaulted the next second by a memory so clear, so visceral, he swears he’s back in that moment again -- only to have his awareness dragged back to the workspace, greeted by the fast, incomprehensible voices of Stark and Shuri, and the soft comforting voices of Steve and Natasha next to him. He clings to them, willing them to anchor him, only to be ripped away again as he’s thrust back into his own memories.

Before they'd started, Shuri had explained how she thought they had some wiggle room with the altered memories. She could likely make him forget the memory of killing the Starks -- delete the pathway, Stark had said -- even if she couldn't completely erase the memory as such. At first he hadn't answered. Had looked at Stark who met gaze with his own, unflinching. "Do what you want," Stark had said. "It never happened." In the end, that's what drove him to tell Shuri he didn't want it. Sorting out his head, his past, his life, what was real was hard enough without carrying around false memories that weren't his to fuck it all up. He would remember that he'd been set up, he'd remember thinking he did it, that was real. But he didn't need to remember the moment itself that hadn't happened. But he had requested that, if possible, she make it so he could remember being taken in Bucharest. Steve had tried to protest, but Bucky had insisted. Knowing that it had happened, and having no recollection, not even a blank space where those days should be -- that would be worse than knowing it had happened at all.

Once they'd given him the all clear, he'd left the workspace in a hurry, grateful that no one had tried to follow him. He needed air. Space. He didn't know what he needed, and in the absence of knowing, he’d retreated out to a small back courtyard that overlooked a garden. He should be feeling relief. A weight lifted. Closure. Something. Natasha had used his code, and nothing happened. The only memories in his head are his own. It is everything he wanted. But he just feels hollow, and wrung out. Exhausted and keyed up. Sleep would probably help, but there is no chance in hell sleep is going to come any time soon after this.

He gives in and just lets his mind wander where it wants, or needs, and has no idea how much time has actually passed when he hears footsteps approaching. Not Steve or Nat, by the sound of it, and that is enough to pull his awareness back into sharp focus.

"Stark," he says, startling slightly with the realisation of who had appeared.

"Tony," he corrects. "Figured we're probably on a first name basis now. What with the general... everything." He waves his hand absently and steps out into the yard, pacing around before coming to pause next to the stone railing, looking down over the garden.

Minutes pass, and neither of them says anything. He probably should say something, but at this point, he honestly has no clue what to say. Figures Stark -- Tony -- is in the same boat. So it comes as a bit of a shock when Tony breaks the silence with, "I owe you an apology."

Bucky blink and looks up at him, brow furrowing. "What for?"

Tony just looks at him, opens his mouth as though he were going to say something. Shuts it again. A moment later says, "I asked you if you remembered them."

"And I said I did. Because I did," Bucky reminds him. He doesn't now. He remembers the grainy video in the file, remembers watching it. Remembers seeing himself shoot out the camera. But he doesn't remember the weight of the gun in his hand as he did it. Doesn't remember the sound of the crash, or the look on Howard Stark's face when the light went out from his eyes. Turns out, that is a relief.

"Natasha was right," Tony presses on. "It didn't add up. Sloppy. That footage would never have existed. You would have planned. Known the route. Known where there was surveillance."

Bucky just nods.

"And if, for some stupid reason, you did assassinate someone right in front of a camera, you would have reported it. HYDRA would have made sure all records were destroyed.

Again, Bucky nods. He was very, very good at what did. Flawless. He'd been as shocked as any of them to see that footage. But he'd remembered doing it, so very, painfully clearly.

"Right. That's what I thought." Tony turns away from him and leans against the railing, staring up into a sky that's gone dark with the night. Another silence falls between them, only this time he's not worried about what he should say, because it's clear he doesn't have to say anything. But instead of losing himself in thought, he instead studies Tony, the line of tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers tap against the stone, never still, the way that Bucky can practically hear him thinking, wrestling with the same things Bucky has been wrestling with. What a hell of a realisation that is, that of all people, it's him and Tony, sitting out here, wrestling with the fact that they'd been used, expertly manipulated, and left to deal with the fallout.

"You know, I was finally working on resolving the issues I was carrying following their death," Tony says at last, still looking up at the sky. "Trying to free myself from the burden I'd carried. I never really got over it. More Mom than Dad, if I'm being totally honest here. She was.... special." Bucky can relate, and he allows himself to think briefly about his own Ma, the way she'd hugged him when he'd shipped out. The way she was always making Steve come around after his own mother died.

"I was pretty open about the fact that that was a sore spot for me. Put it all out there when I was showing off the BARF at MIT," - Bucky watches as Tony visibly winces - "still need a better name. God. Anyway. Basically shouted it from the rooftop that that was a bomb I hadn't finished diffusing." He finally turned back around to face Bucky, arms folded over his chest. "I owe you an apology, because I was so busy being upset, being angry, being _thrilled_ that I had someone to blame, someone to project onto that I never stopped to think about how it didn't add up. How convenient it all was."

Bucky has absolutely no fucking idea what to say to that. He kind of wishes that Steve or Nat were here. They would have some idea how to navigate what feels like a minefield. Not sure what else to do, Bucky slowly crosses the space, closing the distance between the two of them. Tony doesn't flinch or recoil, so at least maybe he's not making a massive misstep here. He leans against the stone railing next to Tony, a few feet away. "I don't blame you for blaming me," he says at last, still not sure what the right words are. "Hell, I blamed me. It could have very easily been me. I've done dozens of hits just like that. Someone else's parents. No difference. Keep blaming me, if it helps."

"Yeah, it doesn't," Tony tells him. Bucky didn't really figure it would. "Guess I'll just have to hate HYDRA then."

Bucky snorts at that. "Welcome to the club." That actually gets a laugh from Tony, and Bucky feels the corner of his mouth twitch into a smile. The relief he thought he should be feeling slowly comes, easing the pressure that has been sitting on his chest for days, weeks. "You and Steve, will you be okay?" He has to know. He'd been so glad when he'd found out that Steve had a life, friends, family. He can't bear the thought of him losing that. He might not have made the kill, but Steve had still kept the truth from Tony, had left him to follow Bucky.

"Yeah, I think so," Tony says after a moment's consideration. They probably have a lot to talk about, or at least Steve has a lot he wants to say to Tony. But, if Tony’s willing to listen, that’s a start. A sliver of hope. Maybe some bridges could be mended.

"So, Sergeant James Barnes."

Bucky looks at him and shrugs. "Yeah. I guess that's me. In the mostly-flesh." He wiggles the fingers on his left hand to emphasize his lame joke. "Call me Bucky." That is his name. That's who he was. Who he is. Who he wants to be.

"Bucky," Tony repeats. "So, I feel like we kind of maybe got off on the wrong foot the first time around. Let's take another stab at this. Metaphorically, I mean." He sticks out his hand, and Bucky takes it, sharing a firm but playful shake. Tony’s hand is warm and work-roughened in his.

"Call me Tony. I've heard a lot about you. Think I'm looking forward to getting to know you, Bucky."

Bucky smiles at him, an actual, genuine smile, and for the first time since he walked away from the Potomac, he actually thinks that things might be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr!](https://dapperanachronism.tumblr.com)


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